My First Book: The Mysterious Blob

Storytelling. This is the year I focus on it. To begin, I'm going back to… well, to the beginning.

The Mysterious Blob was my first (and so far, only) book, written when I was 10 years old. It began as a class assignment and grew into to this book (okay – book may be optimistic, but I was a kid!) and later into a puppet show that I performed for even younger kids and my family. Damn – I guess I've always gone all-in.

I can remember sitting at my desk with a yellow, number 2 pencil in hand, scratching out the initial version of this story onto wide-ruled notebook paper. Or maybe that was the CIA spy story I wrote around the same time… As I wrote, the difficulties of this life faded away and were replaced with adventure and excitement. I was transported to another world where I could be the hero and save the day. Around this age, I became fascinated with other lives and finding ways to engross myself in them.

Books and video games offered doors to step through. Looking back, that symbolism was nearly literal. I was captivated by stories like The Chronicles of Narnia and games like Ultima, where the hero is literally transported from our world into mystical realms. It's no wonder that I'm fascinated by reality-bending movies like The Matrix, Inception and Dark City. It's no wonder I pursued acting and theatre – where you could lose yourself in a character's life. It's no wonder that I've traveled the world and have had fantastic adventures. And it's no wonder that I'm drawn to learning other people's stories. You know what they say – you can only connect the dots looking backwards.

Now I'm sitting at a more modern maple-slab desk, having traded my pencil and paper for a laptop and WordPress. Dusting off old passions and exercising atrophied muscles – with a big-ass grin on my face.

The story is below – give it a read and have a nostalgic chuckle. Let it transport you back a few years – to something you created when you were a kid; to something that you enjoyed. Then indulge yourself and give that thing a try. You just might enjoy yourself.

P.S. My “About the author” page is fantastic. I certainly had no lack of ego and my geek flag hung high. And I was so certain of the path my life would follow…